Google Chrome doesn't seem to respect my DPI setting in Windows. I run at 150 DPI, but Chrome ignores that, meaning that images and text are teeeeeeny tiny.

I hit:

Ctrl + +
Ctrl + +

to zoom in. Unfortunately every new tab, or new window, defaults to the 100% teeny tiny zoom level.

Update: It's also important to note that you cannot click buttons in flash (e.g. YouTube videos), because Chrome mis-handles mouse coordinates. (Fixed 6.0.472.55)

Is it possible for either:

Chrome to respect my Windows dpi setting?
Chrome to remember my zoom preference?

Checked version: 4.1.249.1045

Half fixed

While Chome still doesn't honor the Windows DPI setting, it does now remember your zoom level.

Version: 5.0.375.55

Five-Eighths Fixed

While Chrome still doesn't honor the Windows DPI setting, it does now offer a default "page zoom" option:

enter image description here

Unfortunately there is no zoom level that matches my current DPI setting: 136% (131dpi).

Version: 10.0.648.133

Zoom flag

I tried scoducks' suggestion of the new hidden dpi flag. It's truly awful. It seems to cause Chrome to simply re-scale the final rendered Window; causing text to become blurry (rather than sharper):

enter image description here

Ian Boyd

Posted 2009-08-31T11:49:53.580

Reputation: 18 244

Answers

It's a known bug with Chromium, the program on which Chrome was built upon.

Be sure to star it!

Update: More up-to-date related bug report: Enable high-DPI support in Vista, Win7 and Win8

Kelbizzle

Posted 2009-08-31T11:49:53.580

Reputation: 1 808

More up-to-date related bug report: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=149881

– Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 – 2014-08-14T16:00:18.117

Also see https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=410696 For me is still does not work (v53), I have set DPI to 125%, but Chrome show pages smaller than FF or IE. (fun fact: Windows supported DPI scaling since at least XP, that is year 2002)

– David Balažic – 2016-10-05T15:23:14.590

omfg. i've been watching the thread, getting e-mail notifications where there's a new response. A developer locked the thread 5 minutes ago - saying he doesn't really understand the issue. *facepalm* – Ian Boyd – 2011-01-10T23:52:38.127

I had this question and found this answer that was posted somewhere else. Go to: chrome://flags/#high-dpi-support

It is not perfect because it isn't fully supported yet, but it is exactly what you were looking for, it fixed the problem for me. A few buttons are mis-sized, but it is much better.

scoducks

Posted 2009-08-31T11:49:53.580

Reputation: 1

I tried this and reverted it back, the chrome menus and extensions don't play well with this setting (eg scrolling menu text rendered out of visible window). – Eric L – 2014-11-05T20:47:15.747

2Text is horribly blurry. Looks like they're simply applying the blunt hammer of scaling the final composited window image - rather than actually supporting high-dpi. Hopefully it's a work in progress; maybe in 7 years Chrome will be where IE was 7 years ago. – Ian Boyd – 2014-05-17T21:45:21.063

Update: 9/5/2014

Chrome 37 now supports high-dpi!

For example:

the bookmark bar icons are scaled
the bookmark bar text is scaled
the address bar text is scaled
the tab icon and text is scaled
extension icons are scaled
the customize icon is scaled

Now Chrome just needs to improve its rendering speed so it's as fast as IE.

But this is a great day!

Ian Boyd

Posted 2009-08-31T11:49:53.580

Reputation: 18 244

And many themes are broken... – Fran Marzoa – 2014-11-06T00:23:24.123

With Chrome 44.0.2403.9 dev-m (64-bit) I have a problem where only a few website are rendered extremely small. What is working for me is to use the Chrome DevTools to emulate a different device.

ctrl + shift + i to open the Chrome DevTools
ctrl + shift + m to toggle device mode on, if it isn't already on
In the device drop menu at the top left of the screen, select a mobile device, e.g. a tablet with a large display resolution like the Nexus 10
ctrl + shift + i to close the Chrome DevTools

This causes the page to be rendered normally for me, but you may need to select one of the laptop devices, after selecting one of the mobile devices, to get the page to render correctly for you.

WhiteKnight

Posted 2009-08-31T11:49:53.580

Reputation: 101

Then don't use the dev release, use the latest stable release instead (43.0.2357) – DavidPostill – 2015-05-23T14:16:50.473

@DavidPostill This wasn't a complaint, but rather a possible solution for the other people experiencing the same problem. This problem has existed for years and still exists in current versions of the Chrome browser, which I was highlighting by posting my version number and can also be seen by recent posts in the bug listed in the post current marked as the answer. – WhiteKnight – 2015-05-23T17:44:47.343

If it's only a few websites then it is probably not a chrome problem. Can you share a couple of failing sites? – DavidPostill – 2015-05-23T17:50:43.377

@DavidPostill A few examples are Reddit, 500px and Google Drive, but other smaller websites have the same problem. I've reported these sites to Google. – WhiteKnight – 2015-05-23T18:01:14.347

This is what worked for me,

Instead of using the default scaling of 100%, 125%, 150% etc., I changed it to custom scaling of 126%, and it worked.

For some reason Google Chrome ignores scaling upto 125%.

SJCorp

Posted 2009-08-31T11:49:53.580

Reputation: 1

I will try to sum up the discussion at google support forums previously linked. It comes down to two suggestions.

A. Design our web pages with fixed width and fixed font, for a set dpi and then let the browser scale everything up.

B. Use variable text, image and table sizes that are specified as relative to 96 DPI and let the browser add the desktops DPI settings to those values.

Microsoft have gone and set the Zoom level in IE8 to match the DPI setting in the OS. If you have 125% DPI size (120dpi), default zoom level in IE8 would be 125%. Observe that IE defines it as percent increase from the default 96 DPI, not the actual DPI target it renders for. 100% means 96dpi in Windows DPI settings.

The truth is, most web pages are not made with a variable text, table and design size, so you would mostly need to use the zoom-the-entire-web-page-in feature. Lazy web designers and Microsofts Windows dominance with their unfair bundling of Internet Explorer, we can assume the zoom solution is here to stay.

DarkUltra

Posted 2009-08-31T11:49:53.580

Reputation: 1

2How is A different from B? i mean, from an implementation point of view, you wouldn't notice any difference. And as a web-designer, both are equivalent. And while ie does "zoom", it doesn't "zoom". It doesn't "blow everything up". If it did then text would get fuzzy. It doesn't. ie rescales everything as appropriate. On the other hand i'm getting really tired of Chrome's poor high-dpi support. As soon as ie9, and it's fast rendering speed is released, i'm sooo switching back. – Ian Boyd – 2010-04-03T23:51:53.340

Also, it would be a poor decision to call it 96dpi, rather than 100%. Nobody know, cares, or show have to know, or have to care, what a dpi is, and why there's 96 of them. Windows itself, when setting dpi, doesn't even call it dpi. They use percentage larger, e.g. 125% – Ian Boyd – 2010-04-03T23:55:47.963

1We could call the resolution on monitors as VGA, WXGA, WUXGA etc instead of 640x480, 1280x768 or 1920x1200. We could put parking, slow, fast, very fast and too fast on the speedometer. We could dumb down anything and call it game. Just like they have in Modern Warfare 2 multiplayer; they set the latency as bars, and no way to tell how much one bar represents. It was discovered that they were way too high range, and many people edited the config files so one bar would mean 25ms. And then they found out most people had more then 100ms latency any time, to any host. – DarkUltra – 2010-04-04T17:10:41.640

It would require a learning curve by displaying the latency in ms instead of bars, but then again it would scale nicely into the future, when internet connections become faster. – DarkUltra – 2010-04-04T17:11:54.367

The same applies to DPI. It is necessary to know if you wanto be accurate in what you design or write, and it would scale well in the future, and it would provide an accurate reference point from general text and design scaling. The web pages should be able to scale and look good in most desktop and laptop resolutions and DPI situations. – DarkUltra – 2010-04-04T17:12:35.600

About the scaling and zooming. what IE and opera and now chrome do is render the text and tables/css layout at a higher resolution, and zoom in the images. If the images would be natively at a higher resolution, say 200x200, and the web page at a good reference point 96DPI would specify the image at 100x100 (this can be done in the <img> tag), then the image would look nice and sharp at any dpi setting from 96 up to 192, given the browser does proper bicubic interpolation and the image does not containg very sharp details. – DarkUltra – 2010-04-04T17:13:49.590

Windows do use DPI as a value when you set Custom DPI size. I wish they would use the DPI value at the other screen too. – DarkUltra – 2010-04-04T17:22:57.883

The problem is that when presenting a 96x96 pixel image to the user Chrome will render the image 96 pixels wide by 96 pixels high on the monitor. That assumed 1:1 mapping between pixels in the computer and pixels on the monitor is incorrect. – Ian Boyd – 2011-01-11T03:23:40.903

Firstly, if Chrome (or other applications) appear blurry, go back to Windows dpi settings and check the 'XP style font scaling' option.

enter image description here

Meanwhile in Chrome, keep zoom at 100% but increase the font size to large (or very large). Set a minimum font size.

If you have Chrome 26 or earlier, this works well. Page text is scaled up, as is Chrome itself (the url and bookmarks bars). In Chrome 28 or later, the page text is scaled up, but the url and bookmark bars remain small.

Colonel Panic

Posted 2009-08-31T11:49:53.580

Reputation: 9 529

That just disables desktop composition of non-highDpi aware applications. The same effect can be achieved by disabling scaling of just Chrome. (Bonus chatter: Don't use a global solution to solve a local problem Either way, it doesn't solve the problem.

– Ian Boyd – 2013-07-09T11:42:43.030

How to make Google Chrome honor my Windows DPI setting?

Zoom flag

Answers

Update: 9/5/2014